For the life of me I cannot figure out how to update these libraries. If I do a "install ExtUtils::MakeMaker", I get the same set of circular dependencies. There doesn't seem to be a way to remove the existing out-of-date modules using cpan. If I simply rename the directory then cpan itself fails - it's dependent upon all 3 of those to even run!

I see various tips for working around this issue, but they're generally Linux-centric. I'm trying to do this on a Windows box.

That's a really old version of perl (circa 2004) and the main problem.

Your first step really should be to upgrade perl to a more reasonable version. If you don't want to do that, then you'll probably need to upgrade the modules manually via force install.

cpan> force install ExtUtils::MakeMaker

Thanks. Yeah I knew I was using an old version of perl; our IT doesn't do much in the way of perl support though, so I'll have to do some work to get the latest. (I'm generally using ActivePerl) Haven't had the time to yet, but hopefully can try it before long.

force install doesn't work, as it gives an error "install: missing file operand", as well as a few warnings that I'm sure are related to things being old.

The funny thing is when cpan gives errors it says "try this..." and when I do it says it doesn't know what the heck I'm talking about. E.g. it says "Try 'install --help' for more information.", but when I do that, it says "Cannot install --help, don't know what that is. Try the command 'i /--help/' to find objects with matching identifiers." But when I do "i /--help/" it says "No objects found of any type for argument /--help/." It appears there's a total mismatch between my help text versions and the cpan command line interpreter itself.

I would highly recommend installing Strawberry perl instead of ActiveState perl. Strawbeery perl comes with a compiler so you can build/install modules without having to rely on AS somewhat limited precompiled modules via ppm.

I started out years ago with ActiveState but always had problems with module installs so a few years ago I switched to Strawberry perl and almost never have any problems with installing modules. I will never go back to AcitveState.